Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy

25 Pages·2015·1.14 MB·English

by  Joseph Crane

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Historical and Personal Background of the Divine Comedy
By Joseph Crane
May 2012

This essay is to accompany Between Fortune and Providence: Astrology and the Universe
in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
What follows is the overview and timeline I wish I had when I first started reading the
Divine Comedy. Many commentaries of the Divine Comedy give background historical
information, usually consisting of a general introduction and brief explanations when specific
characters and events come up within the poem. Here I will proceed sequentially, beginning
centuries before Dante’s birth and concluding in the year of his death. When I first mention a
historical person whose character appears in the Divine Comedy, the name will be in bold,
followed by page references from Between Fortune and Providence. Because this section gives
an overview specific to the Divine Comedy, Italy and the city-states of northern Italy, especially
Florence, is our focus.
This essay is partly organized according to the modern astrological practice that uses
cycles of the modern planets Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. When relevant, we will look at outer
planet configurations when they form conjunctions, opening squares, oppositions, and closing
squares that correspond to New, First Quarter, and Full, and Third Quarter Moons. Since many
readers of Between Fortune and Providence are astrologers or are interested in modern
astrology, this will be useful for them. Those who are not astrologers can pass over this
material.

Here’s a preliminary summary of some the interacting themes of Church, politics, and
economics that provide some background for the Divine Comedy.
Religion: Understanding the medieval Church takes a special leap of the imagination.
The Church had a dominant role in organizing and giving cohesiveness to Europe over a very
long time. Yet the Church had its ups and downs, politically and spiritually. Because of its
wealth and political power, the Church was also vulnerable to being abducted by strong secular
rulers, and this is the case throughout the medieval era. In this essay we first encounter the
Church as largely controlled by secular authorities, but reform movements were afoot that
would help give it greater independence and spiritual authority over time. As the Church grew
stronger, however, it would become more empire than religion and at times was unbelievably
worldly.
Over the centuries the papacy sometimes inaugurated some attempts to reform the
Church. There were also reform movements from the monastic side. Other Church reform
movements, like the orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans, began with charismatic leaders.
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There were also some failed attempts that have come down to us as “heresies.” Two centuries
after Dante’s death, one heretical preacher, Martin Luther, would help launch the Protestant
Reformation.
Politics: In Dante’s lifetime, the Italian peninsula was comprised of many autonomous
and economically diverse regions. In the south were the vulnerable but cosmopolitan kingdoms
of Sicily and Naples. The central region was governed by the Pope. In the wealthier and more
urbanized north, including Florence, there were many independent and prosperous city-states
that were frequently at war with each other and with the larger political entities around them.
Beginning around the time of Dante’s birth, the “Holy Roman Empire” was a loose
confederation of warring German princes and their territories that were governed by an
Emperor – at least in theory. In the centuries before Dante, the Holy Roman Empire was more
dominant in Italian affairs.
Just before and during the poet’s lifetime, however, the French monarchy had become
a major player in European affairs. Dante resented this greatly. He was nostalgic for a renewed
Roman Empire, but the reality was the perpetually disappointing contemporary “Holy Roman
Empire.” Dante did not know that Europe’s future would favor not empires but nations like
France, England, and Spain.
Economics: The monetary and banking systems of Dante’s world would be more familiar
to us than its religious and political institutions. Unlike the more rural and feudal Europe to its
north and west, northern Italy contained commercial and banking institutions similar to ours.
Italy benefited from its proximity to major trade routes and, with the Crusades, more traffic
that moved back and forth across the Mediterranean. Toward Dante’s lifetime, Florence was a
prosperous banking center and was also known for its textile industry. Dante loathed the
commercialization of Florence and northern Italy in general. Yet this commercial activity would
help bankroll Italy’s greatest eras in the centuries to come.
In short, Dante’s conceptions of the flow of history into the future turned out to be
completely wrong. He longed for a renewal of times that would never return.
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905: A Fine Place to Start

We begin in an
astrological manner by noting
that there was a Neptune/Pluto
conjunction in 905.
Neptune and Pluto are
the two outermost planets and
their cycles represent the life
span of long-term historical
patterns. Neptune suggests an
era’s ideals, while the grim task
of turning them into reality
belongs to Pluto. The beginning
of a cycle, like the New Moon, is
in the dark, but suggests a
future that will manifest more
clearly in the quarter, halfway,
and three-quarter positions of
the cycle.
This particular Neptune-Pluto cycle that began in 905 found much of European culture
and civilization at a low point. The previous century had seen destructive Viking attacks
throughout Europe. This had done great damage to the fragmenting Carolingian Empire
(named after Charlemagne) that then included present-day France, Germany, and northern
Italy. It is more likely, however, that rivalries within the Carolingian dynasty caused their rulers
to become weaker and their Empire to become more fragmented throughout the previous
century.
Italy was also fragmented and was surrounded by greater powers. To its east were
invasions by the Magyars and this particularly impacted Italy; to the south and south-east and
in the Mediterranean Sea were the Muslims who by 905 had control of Sicily and much of
southern Italy. The Byzantine Empire also had holdings in southern Italy. Fearing the Muslims
over all, this would drive the Church in Rome into the hands of the secular powers of the north
(Carolingian rulers) and the east (Byzantine rulers) for protection.
At this time northern Italy was within the “Kingdom of Italy” and theoretically governed
by the Carolingian Empire and dominated by an older Lombard and Frankish aristocracy. But
this area’s regions were relatively free politically and had become more economically
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independent.
The year 905 was close to the end for the Eastern Carolingian kings who would be
gradually replaced by the Ottonian emperors. The Ottonians directly controlled an area roughly
where Germany is now, but they were quite interested in north Italy’s wealth and relative
stability. During this century Ottonian emperors would sometimes govern north Italy but this
was resented by other secular authorities. The Ottonian empire would become the “Holy
Roman Empire” that would have such an important role to play in the centuries ahead.
In 905 was also the beginning of the gradual diminishing of the Viking invasions
throughout Europe. A few years afterwards a group of Vikings were given a kingdom of their
own in on the Eastern coast of France; descendents of the Normans (“North-men”) would
dominate much of southern Italy for several hundred years. The 900’s became a period of
(very) relative peace that saw the growth of serfdom and of the feudal system, especially in the
remnants of the Carolingian Empire, yet these structures of social and economic relationship
never took firm hold in northern Italy with its stronger city life. There will be more of that to
come.
With greater security there was renewed political and commercial activity, and so there
would be more markets for the commercial cities of northern Italy. Its commercial activity and
proximity to the Mediterranean gave the area a more fluid political and class structure. At this
time the most prosperous Italian cities were Milan, Genoa, and Venice; Florence would join this
group much later.
The Papacy had politically allied themselves with the Carolingians and then with the
Ottonians. As a result, the Papacy was dominated by these secular powers. Ottonian rulers
could appoint and depose Popes and other church officials; the moral and religious authority of
the Papacy was at a low point throughout the tenth century.
There were other trends that began early in this century. The Church saw the
beginnings of a major reform movement when the first Cluniac monastery began in Burgundy in
910. Unlike the other Church institutions at this time, this monastery did not answer to local or
regional secular authorities but rather answered directly to the Pope himself. The Cluniac
movement aimed toward reducing the corruption of the Church and promoting a greater
separation between Church and secular authority. Although monastic in nature, this
movement would greatly affect the Church as a whole and promote a gradual renewal
throughout the next two centuries. This was the first of many reform movements during the
centuries prior to the life of Dante.

987: A New Set Of French Kings
In 987, the he last king of the Carolingian dynasty in the west died and Hugh Capet (p.
61) was elected king of (what we call) France by the nobility of the area. This began the
Capetian Dynasty that would last for several hundred years. We meet Capet in Purgatorio 20
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among the avaricious, and his appearance gives Dante a chance to criticize the line of French
kings as insufferably greedy.
Often when we think of French kings in history we think of very powerful and arrogant
individuals like Louis XIV of the seventeenth century. This was far from the truth for much of
the medieval period, when the area we call France was made up of many small principalities
governed by various ruling families and the king was often little more than a figurehead..
Additionally, much of what we now call France was held by England. During the next few
centuries the power of the French monarchy would gradually increase; by Dante’s time they
had become dominant in Europe and in the fourteenth century the Papacy itself moved to
Southern France.

1077: The Investiture Conflict.
We move forward a century and find a resurgent Papacy. From its nadir in the 900’s the
church itself moved to become more self-contained and respondent to the spiritual needs of its
believers. This process culminated in the mid-eleventh century.
The investiture conflict involved the major question of who appoints Church officials,
including appointing new popes. Was this a role for the secular authorities or the Church itself?
In a fundamental way this was an early controversy about the respective functions and powers
of Church and State.
Here is some background. In the middle of the eleventh century, before becoming Pope,
Gregory VII (then Hildebrand)1 was a senior advisor to Pope Leo IX who was attempting to
reform the church and centralize papal authority. Pope Leo and Pope Gregory aimed to (1) have
popes elected by senior clergy, not appointed by an Emperor, (2) enforce priestly celibacy, (3)
forbid the buying and selling of church offices, or “simony,” (see Inferno 19) and (4) turn over
the power of appointing bishops (“investiture”) to the Church hierarchy, not to secular leaders.
[Another of Pope Leo’s chief advisors, from the monastic side, was Peter Damian (p. 127-128)
who we meet in Paradise’s sphere of Saturn, Paradiso 21.]
When Pope Gregory sent an edict forbidding secular rulers from appointing clerics,
Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, appointed his own bishop in defiance. Gregory responded
by excommunicating the Emperor (excluding him from the church and its sacraments) and
proclaiming him deposed as secular ruler. If Henry didn’t repent within a year these two
proclamations would be made permanent.
In an attempt to be reconciled with the Church, Henry traveled over the Alps in the
winter, put on the garb of a penitent, and waited barefoot in the snow for three days awaiting
Pope Gregory. The place of this famous encounter between Emperor and Pope was the castle
in Canossa (north of Florence) occupied by the countess Mathelda (p. 71, 78-80). She was the
dominant noble in Northern and central Italy at the time and was strongly associated with the

1 He should not be confused with Pope Gregory the Great from the late sixth century.
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Church reform movement and Pope Gregory. This is the same name as the woman Dante
places as forest deity of the Earthly Paradise. It’s possible that that Dante was alluding to the
best relationship between secular and religious authorities: a reformed but commanding
church and a humbler and wiser secular ruler. If so, this “improved” relationship was illusory.
The meeting between Pope and Emperor did not solve the issue of lay investiture.
Although it looked very differently at the time, this was a shrewd political move by Emperor
Henry: as leader of the Church, the Pope had to “forgive” the Emperor. This gave Henry the
time and opportunity he needed to augment his position in Germany. A few years later Henry
came back to Italy with an army and
Gregory was forced to flee and he soon
died in exile.
Of interest to the astrologer is the
Neptune-Pluto cycle. At this time Neptune
(in mid-Gemini) was in an opening square
to Pluto (in mid-Pisces). Unlike the
conjunction in 905 that is about hidden
beginnings, the opening square is a turning
point of manifestation. This encounter
between Emperor and Pope would be
emblematic of many centuries of conflict
between religious and secular authorities
in Europe. This chart is set for January 15,
1077.
The investiture conflict continued
past the lifetimes of both men and was
formally resolved in 1122.
The issue was part of the much
larger question of ultimate authority for Europe. Would the continent become a secular
theocracy, whereby its temporal rulers also governed the church? Or was it to be a papal
theocracy, whereby the pope was the universal leader and bestowed authority to the secular
rulers? For centuries, momentum went back and forth between the two sides.
By Dante’s time, however, both Empire and Papacy had become seriously weakened,
which had resulted in generations of political chaos and violence in northern Italy before the
poet was born. The long-term result of this impasse was that Europe became neither a secular
nor a papal theocracy.
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1090 or 1091: Birth year of Cacciaguida2
In the middle of the Paradiso, while visiting the sphere of Mars reserved for crusaders
and martyrs, Dante the pilgrim meets his ancestor Cacciaguida from five generations before the
poet’s birth.
In Paradiso 15 and 16, the old crusader tells of his life, the life of the Florence of his era
and compares it (quite negatively) to the Florence of Dante’s day. Cacciaguida tells of a
Florence that was quite different from the large prosperous and politically conflicted city that
Florence has become. During his lifetime, he relates, Florence was smaller, less commercial,
and more homogenous. According to the account given by Cacciaguida, Florence during his
lifetime had fewer large homes, less conspicuous consumption by the wealthy, and people
dressed in a simpler style.
The city hadn’t expanded and become integrated with people from surrounding areas.
As stated by Dante’s character, the “original” medieval Florentines considered themselves
directly descended from the Romans and their society had degenerated due to the inclusion of
outsiders.
Historical records of Florence at this time are sparse but a few things are known.
Florence at this time was hardly more than a village surrounded by old Roman walls. It was
during Cacciaguida’s lifetime that Florence began to defeat and to assimilate many of the
surrounding feudal families and many of the neighboring cities. A generation after
Cacciaguida’s death, new city walls were constructed that tripled the city area.
A growing merchant class would help initiate moves toward self-government that would
be called the “commune movement”. Not to be confused with modern alternative living
arrangements, communes were set up in different places in Europe but especially in the more
urbanized northern Italy. It is likely that communes began as informal associations of groups
with common interests, such as town maintenance, defense, and especially by a dislike for
arbitrary taxes levied by surrounding nobles and Emperors. By acting on their own behalf, cities
were able to make alliances with Church, Emperor or King to obstruct the various nobles who
often surrounded the cities with their estates. Gradually these city groups would elect leaders
that were likely from a town’s aristocratic families – this was a system that had features of
democracy and features of oligarchy, where those from wealthy and connected families were
routinely the city’s leaders. By Dante’s time the different guilds were dominant in this system
of self-government, and Dante became one of its leaders.
During this time and for centuries afterwards people in northern Italy were inclined to

2 Commentators usually cite 1091 as the birth year for Dante’s ancestor. In Between Fortune and Providence, page
119, I discuss the provocative lines of Paradiso 16.37-39, where Cacciaguida states that Mars has returned to its
position 580 times since the Annunciation. Recently it’s come to light that the correct interpretation of the
Almanac that Dante used gives not 580 but 579 synodic periods that would bring us to 1090 when indeed Mars
was in Leo. (Personal communication R. Martinez 3/21/2012) The birth year of the summer of 1090 also gives us a
Mars-Jupiter conjunction that would certainly fit in well with the poet’s righteous ancestor.
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think of themselves not as Italian but as members of a particular city and during the medieval
period Italian cities frequently went to war with one another, including in Cacciaguida’s
lifetime.
Although there is no independent record of this man Cacciaguida, there is no reason to
doubt his existence.

1095: First Crusade called.
We return to the larger world.
In previous decades and far to the east of Italy, the Seljuk Turks had taken over a large
area including most of Asia Minor (our modern “Turkey”) from the Byzantine Empire. The
Byzantine Emperor had appealed to Pope Gregory for help, but at that time the Pope was too
busy feuding with Emperor Henry. Times changed though, and in November 1095 Gregory’s
successor Urban II called upon all Christians to “take up the cross” and recapture the holy lands
from the Muslims. This also occurred as Uranus was approaching a closing square to Neptune,
bringing about a focus on religious and secular structure.
Two years later an expedition later identified as the “First Crusade” left for the East and
by 1099 had conquered and occupied significant land held by the Muslims, especially
Jerusalem. The victorious crusaders established Latin-speaking medieval states in the original
Holy Land and on the Eastern Mediterranean coast.
This would be a financial windfall for Italian coastal cities (particularly Venice) that could
transport troops to the Holy Land and who could profit from the increased economic activity
military activity brings. Florence would also become involved in increased trade.
In spite of its idealistic agenda, the Crusades brought great pillage and unnecessary
slaughter. Future crusades were no more virtuous than the first, and they were less militarily
successful. In spite of the cavernous gap between ideal and reality, the activity of crusading as
taking up the cross for God remained powerful in the European imagination from the medieval
times up to the present day. Dante was no exception to this; in the Divine Comedy the poet
waxes nostalgic for the crusading ideal and, in his conversation with his ancestor Cacciaguida
who ostensibly had died on the Second Crusade, the poet casts himself also as a crusader.

1138: Astrological texts translated into Latin.
During this time and in different parts of Europe, important astrological works from the
Islamic areas were being translated into Latin. In this year Plato of Trivoli translated Ptolemy’s
Tetrabiblos, making the ancient writer of natural astrology available to the Latin West. Two
years earlier Hugh of Santilla translated the Centriquium, falsely attributed to Ptolemy, which
contained basic principles of applied astrology. Previously Adelard of Bath translated Arabic
astronomical tables, works of Abu Masar from the Arabic, and constructed an astrolabe.
The Jewish poet and astrologer Abraham Ibn Ezra, born late in the 11th century, lived in
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Italy and wrote many of his astrological works there. His writings were one of Dante’s sources
for astrology. Some of them are now available in English translations.

1145: Second Crusade and Bernard of Clairvaux.
In 1144 the Muslims recaptured the city of Edessa in present-day Iraq. Pope Eugenius III
called for another expedition to the Holy Land to take back Edessa and to continue the
conquest of the Holy Land for Christendom. The “Second Crusade” was an embarrassing
failure.
One who enthusiastically promoted this new crusade was Bernard of Clairvaux (p. 100,
129, 154-158). As the head of the Cistercian monastic order that was an offshoot of the Cluniac
movement, Bernard was the model of the disciplined and contemplative life. He was a writer,
preacher, strong adversary, and one of the most respected religious people of his age. Bernard
attributed the Second Crusade’s failure to the spiritual deficiencies of European Christendom.
Bernard was a staunch opponent of the new scholarly attraction for Aristotle whose
writings for the first time were widely available in the Latin west (“widely” being a relative
term, of course). Bernard was also highly critical of the dialectical method that has come down
to us as “scholasticism.” In particular he spared no effort in making life miserable for Peter
Abelard, one such dialectical intellectual. Instead of an approach of scholarship, Bernard
promoted personalized and experiential methods of religious practice and in particular
promoted the cult of the Virgin Mary. In the Divine Comedy Bernard appears only at the very
end of the poem, replacing Beatrice as the pilgrim’s guide to lead him to the Virgin Mary and
the vision of God.
Along with many kings and nobles, the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad III took part in the
Second Crusade. One of his soldiers was the knighted Cacciaguida who died on the crusade.
See Paradiso 15.139-148.
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This chart is set for noontime on
December 5, 1151. This is the midpoint
in the Pluto/Neptune cycle that began in
905. At this time Western Europe saw a
tremendous amount of political and
religious activity: the second Crusade
had failed, the fight between Emperor
and Pope for northern Italy was just
beginning (as we will see just below),
and (as stated above) the conflict
between religious conservatism and the
new styles of philosophy had begun.
(The third quarter square occurred soon
after Dante’s death.)

1156: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa stirs up trouble.
The year 1156 saw an important meeting between Pope (Adrian IV) and Emperor
Frederick I (or Frederick Barbarossa, “Red-Beard”). The Emperor, far stronger than his
predecessors, had come to Italy with his army, subdued a popular revolt that had exiled the
Pope from Rome, and insisted that the Pope give him the crown. Reluctantly and after a short
impasse, Adrian crowned Frederick Holy Roman Emperor. In Germany there had been much
conflict between Frederick’s family and its German rivals, the “House of Welf”. the Emperor’s
first order of business was to bring some amity between rival factions. Being crowned by the
Pope was certainly one way of doing this.
Relative calm in Germany and legitimization by the Pope helped Emperor Frederick with
his next goal – appropriation of the relatively prosperous areas of northern Italy. These urban
centers were theoretically part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Frederick’s dreams of greater empire ran into strong but uneven opposition. Pope
Adrian and his successors were rather displeased with Frederick’s claims and the independent
cities resisted him. The red bearded Emperor invaded northern Italy six times but never could
establish a permanent foothold there. At times he would dominate the region but then chaos
in the German states would bring him back home.
Some regions in Italy allied with Frederick, others with his German opponents.
(Florence, closer geographically to the Papal States, generally supported the Pope but stayed
out of the fray.) After Frederick captured and burnt Milan to the ground in 1162, many of the